Pineapples Killed My Neighbors
by dress without sleeves
Summary: Hawaii has a zombie problem, and it's really messing with Danny Williams' workweek. / The world ends on a Tuesday, which Danny finds oddly fitting, given his history with Tuesdays. Primarily Danny/Steve. Complete.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Notes:** So, uh. This was supposed to be a short, lolsy comment!fic about zombies and apocalypses and angsty, sexytimes with Steve and Danny. And it's totally going to have the sexytimes. And maybe the lolsy times, too. Definitely the angsty times. But somewhere between short and porn, I got lost, and now I have like 7,000 words of pineapple zombies, and seriously, what is _wrong with me_?

**Title:** Pineapples Killed My Neighbors; or, This Would Never Happen in New Jersey**  
Author:** ohladybegood/dress without sleeves**  
Rating:** R for language, eventual porn**  
Spoilers:** Um, none, and also all? Nothing specific, but I'd rather play it safe.**  
Warnings:** Here there be zombies, and some fairly gross blood, and also and excess of bad language, because Mary Ann McGarrett has the mouth of a sailor.**  
Disclaimer:** If I owned Hawaii Five-0, it would be even gayer than it already is. LOL, wait, that's not possible, this show is so completely unreal.**  
Summary:** Hawaii has a zombie problem, and it's really messing with Danny Williams' workweek.

* * *

Pineapples Killed My Neighbors;  
or, This Would Never Happen in New Jersey

The world ends on a Tuesday, which Danny finds oddly fitting, given his history with Tuesdays. Mondays are slow and Wednesdays take too long, but Tuesdays always signal crisis of epic proportions that usually end in gunfire and the ruination of at least one good button-down.

It had started as a normal day, the kind of day you forget about even while it's happening, and it stayed that way for a glorious three hours, all the way until Danny made the mistake of turning on his TV, where he heard Katie Couric say without a trace of sarcasm, "'Pineapple Zombie' epidemic sweeping through Hawaii." He looks out of his window in time to catch sight of his neighbor Courtney take a huge bite out of her dog Coco, which is disturbing enough without the addition of her brains spilling periodically out of her left ear.

"Right," he says, and finishes his coffee, because if growing up in New Jersey taught him nothing else, it taught him that you can't face the apocalypse without caffeine.

The first thing he does after that is call Rachel, who answers on the second ring in the overly calm voice he recognizes from all the times she waited for him in the hospital, the kind of calm that says she's about to absolutely fucking lose it.

"We're fine," she says before he even gets a chance to ask. "Stan barricaded all the doors and windows and we're camped in the garage. We have canned food."

"Why is Grace crying?"

In a loud voice, Rachel says, "the neighbor ate her rabbit," but then in more of a whisper she adds, "actually it got infected because of the pineapples so Stan had to kill it. But we thought it would be less psychologically damaging if we went with the neighbor story."

And this is incredible to Danny, that there is a fucking _zombie infestation_ happening right now and Rachel is worried about the psychological effects of rabbit death on their daughter, not to mention the fact that Stan has somehow managed to make a hero of himself by virtue of killing a _bunny rabbit._

As he loads the few firearms he keeps at his apartment into the car and starts the engine, he hears himself asking what sort of sick person feets a rabbit pineapple when they far prefer carrots, but this is obviously just another point on the every-growing list of why Hawaii is a miserable place that maybe even had the whole zombie apocalypse thing coming.

"Just get here, please," Rachel says flatly. "We can't stay in the garage forever and Gracie has to pee." She pauses. "If you could bring Steve," she adds hesitantly, "it may help you to have some back up. That is . . . if he's not—"

"Steve is fine," Danny interrupts, even though he hasn't heard from the man and really has no evidence of this. But the idea of a piece of fruit spelling doom for his batshit partner is so fucking inconceivable that he doesn't bother entertaining the thought for longer than it takes to form it.

Steve is fine. Steve is _fine._ Steve is fine because Danny is not going to allow him not to be fine, and if he isn't fine then Danny will _make_ him fine, and that's just the end of that.

"Right then," Rachel says, voice clipped, "good. See you soon."

They hang up and Danny swings out of the driveway, being sure to hit Courtney as he does, because anyone who can eat their own dog raw is obviously beyond help (for one thing, the sad eyes, and for another, the fur). He tries Steve twice and gets no answer, but this has to mean nothing because he's probably just busy beheading shit and enjoying it too much, or else he's lost his phone, or else he's a sadistic bastard who doesn't realize that Danny might be actually fucking _worried_ about him. Danny can already hear the excuses in his head: _well, Danno, I was a bit busy rescuing orphans and puppies from the big scary zombie, I didn't realize there was etiquette to the end of the world._

.x.

Kono wakes up early, like she always does, and goes out with her board. Ben likes to sleep in and catch the afternoon swells, when there are any, so she kisses him on the temple and grins as he mumbles at her groggily.

The sun is just rising, creeping up over the horizon like an old woman rising out of the bath, and Kono let's the waves take her, in and out and in and out, nothing but the water and her feet on the board.

When she gets in Ben is sitting lazily up in bed, his short hair disheveled and a little corner of drool on the side of his mouth. He lives in a tent so there's no such thing as a kitchen, but she grabs a can of pineapple off his counter and tosses it to him, leaping on the bed after it.

Ben laughs, hands coming up to her waist, and drags his mouth along her jaw to her neck to her collarbone.

She pulls away, sitting back as she straddles him. "Easy, tiger," she laughs. "I'm all salty."

"I know," he says cheerfully, licking his lips. "You taste like the ocean. I like it."

And that's just Ben, so different from everyone else in her life. Easy, carefree, here-since-she-was-fifteen _Ben. _None of the baggage of Steve or Danny or even Chin, nine of the casual chauvinism of the guys on the force and none of the stigma of her being able to kick his ass blindfolded. Kono likes this about him, likes that after a day of shooting people she can come back here to the sound of the ocean and her boyfriend yelling good naturedly at the community's kids.

She bends down and kisses him, long and slow, and then crawls off, giggling as he tries to pull her back. "Get a job, hobo," she teases. "I have to shower and get ready for mine."

"I have a job," he calls happily after her, mouth full of pineapple. "It just happens to involve a great deal of sitting on the beach and leaves a lot of time for fooling around with my girlfriend."

Kono shakes her head and walks to the communal shower, closing her eyes as the water streams down her face sand back.

This is when the screaming starts. Kono's eyes snap open and she leaps out of the shower, not quite able to process the sight of Lorelei, the woman who lives next door, peeling off a flake of her own skin and sinking her teeth into her daughter's arm.

"Hey," Kono shouts, "_hey! _What the hell are you doing?"

But when Lorelei turns to look at her, her eyes are dull and dead and there is - oh god- pieces of liquid brain dripping out of her nose like blood, and Kono does what her instincts tell her and runs. like fucking. _hell._ She doesn't stop until she gets to Ben's, not even when everything outside starts going to shit, as the screams and chaos really start coalescing into the smell of blood and-is that ... fruit ...?

"Oh God," she says, realizing, and pulls back the flap of Ben's tent with sudden trepidation and honest-to-God fear.

Everything is quiet and still, and she is just getting ready to be relieved when suddenly there is a decaying hand on her shoulder and she knows by the thin silver ring on the thumb who it belongs to.

She doesn't let herself hesitate, even though she is _screaming _on the inside, even though every fiber of her is thinking no, this is_ Ben_, there might be a cure, _no_.

Kono grabs the hand and yanks as she bends down, flipping Ben over her back and onto the floor. The arm-oh _God-_snaps off and blood splatters across her face as Ben howls. Kono reaches blindly for the gun that she keeps on the counter and empties a round; the bullets go through him without doing anything but punching holes in his skin. He snarls at her, rabid, and keeps advancing, and now her feelings are turned off and this is _survival_. She backs up toward the desk and grabs the closest thing she can find- a paperweight- and let's him leap at her. They go down in a tangle of arms and legs but Kono twists around to his back and starts hitting him- and hitting- and hitting, blood flying into her eyes and face and hair, but he keeps struggling even as his brain turns into putty on her hands, so eventually she stops and places her palms on his cheeks and twists sharply until she hears the _snap_and Ben goes still beneath her.

She gets up slowly and realizes that she is sobbing, frantically brushing bits of brain and muscle and dead skin off her arms and face. She walks to the bedroom and vomits, shaking all over. When she is emptied of food and bile and tears, she goes back to the living area and grabs a kitchen knife and the machete Ben keeps for cutting wood.

She doesn't let herself look in the mirror as she dresses but when she leaves the tent she grabs the picture of her and Ben at fifteen off the desk and tucks it into her pocket.

Outside, most of the commune is decaying or fleeing or being fed on, and Kono twirls her blades in her hands, thinking of the hacked up body of a person she could have loved on the floor.

"Come and _get me, _motherfuckers," she snarls.

.x.

Chin realizes the world has ended when he looks at his phone and sees missed calls from almost every one of his cousins and Malia, who he hasn't heard from since the night she decided she didn't love him anymore and moved out while he was grocery shopping. He turns on the television and watches for a few minutes as the news tells him that- is this a joke?- a batch of pineapples carrying some foreign bacteria has infected his island and is turning people into rabid, decaying versions of themselves. Footage from a helicopter shows burning buildings and fleeing civilians and people without body parts still walking around as if it was nothing, and he thinks, almost comically, that maybe he should have listened to Danny about the pizza thing.

He calls his family back first and only gets a hold of Sid, who tells him that he's got a bunch of civilians holed up at the station and to get over there.

"You know anything about this?" Sid asks, and Chin almost laughs out of stung disbelief.

"You think I knew this was coming? Think what you want about the drug money, but fuck you, brah."

"Look. I'm sorry," Sid snaps, not sounding it. "I don't know what sort of network you guys- "

"Stay safe, Sid," Chin interrupts and hangs up. He calls Kono and gets no answer so he calls Steve and gets no answer so he calls Danny and gets a busy signal, which is at least reassuring. If Danny is live somewhere talking someone's ear off then at least _something _is as it should be, and that's really all Chin needs.

Malia never calls him back, but he gets a text message that says _ hospital. safe. keep in touch_.

He puts together a weapon set, since he doesn't really know how to approach the whole zombie-thing. He reasons knives will be best, always go for the throat since loss of limbs seems irrelevant to the infected. In a flash of genius, he also grabs his fishing spears and a crossbow with arrows he used to use to hunt boar.

Kono calls as he's putting the finishing touches on the Chin Ho Kelly Zombie Survival Kit and he breathes a sigh as her name flashes on his phone. "Thank God, cos," he says as he answers. "Had me worried for a second. I thought maybe you'd broken the ban on that crap canned pineapple your haole likes."

Her silence indicates everything that needs to be said about Ben, and Chin's stomach sinks. "Oh, Kono. I'm sorry."

"It's fine," she says in the same voice she had once used to say _I will blow your fucking brains out_ to a suspect who had been trafficking little girls.

He wants to say something, anything to make it better, but Kono has always been strong and never needed him to be her protector. So he nods once and clears his throat. "Okay then. If you need me."

"Yeah," Kono replies, voice breaking. "I know." There's a pause in which Chin hears her grunt and then the death howl of decayed vocal chords, and then she asks, "You heard from Steve or Danny?"

"No reply from Steve and Danny's line was busy. I'm closest to Steve's, I'm going to head over and check it out. You keep trying Danny and we'll meet up at Five-0."

"Yeah," Kono says again. They both hesitate, and then hang up, neither saying goodbye.

.x.

Kono calls just as Danny is turning into Rachel's suburb and informs him that Chin went over to Steve's to check up since he hasn't answered their calls either, and that they're all to rendezvous at headquarters when they can. She's on the main road, just five minutes from where Danny is parked, so she says she'll meet him there.

When he gets to the front of Rachel's house he abruptly understands why she'd suggested backup, because there are at least fourteen zombified rich people trying to climb over the fence. And while Danny isn't some punk afraid of a fight, he's not Rambo either, so he waits in the car until Kono gets there, on foot.

"You didn't drive?" He asks, making a point to not stare. Kono is literally drenched in blood, so much so that it's matting her hair and turning her face a dusting brown color. She tosses him a machete and says in a dull tone, "Guns don't keep them down and Ben likes to eat pineapple for breakfast," by way of explanation, and he feels a twinge of sympathy he hadn't expected.

"I'm sorry," he says sincerely.

"Me too," she replies, and then sets about releasing her rage and her grief by massacring everything without a pulse.

Danny follows suit, realizing that he'll have to rethink his idea that she was the most well adjusted member of the team as she beheads a fifty-year-old accountant with glasses without a second thought. "So how come you're not turned?" Danny asks, slicing through the throat of a woman who once dropped of Gracie at his apartment when Rachel bailed at the last minute.

"I eat _real_ pineapple, the kind that grows outside my Mom's," Kono replies, doing an excellent job of not freaking out when she kicks someone's chest and her foot goes all the way through. She rips her leg back out and jams her machete into his neck. "Not that store-bought crap Ben loves . . . loved. They think it's a single batch that started it, but then the infected starting attacking and—"

"And it spreads through blood and saliva. Right. Got it." He's freaking out, so he wants to calm down by making some joke about kissing diseases and mono and the generally evil nature of pineapples, but Kono just slaughtered her boyfriend and she is clinging to her machete like it's a teddy bear and she's had a nightmare, so he refrains.

He wishes Steve were here, and then regrets the thought so instantly that he almost chokes.

There's a loud honk from inside the garage and Danny drags Kono out of the way as Rachel and Stan's huge Hummer ploughs through the garage door. Rachel opens the back door and shouts, "Get in!"

They run over four zombies (and this is a phrase Danny will never get used to, not ever) on their way to headquarters, but Danny tells Grace to keep her eyes shut and puts his hands over her ears. "What is it with my partners being insane drivers?" he asks himself. "Is there something about me that invites recklessness?"

"Your problem is that you think we aren't in control," Rachel tells him through gritted teeth as they pull up in front of headquarters. Chin's car is already there, and three others that Danny doesn't recognize. Steve's isn't, and Danny gets the beginning of a knot in his stomach.

"He probably came in Chin's car," Kono's voice says as she comes up behind him, her bloody hand squeezing his shoulder.

"Yeah," he agrees, even though the idea of Steve riding bitch, even in the middle of the apocalypse, is downright impossible to imagine.

They go inside and lock the door, and Danny swings Grace up into his arms. She's stopped crying and is instead descending into the kind of calm freak out that Rachel has, where she doesn't speak and watches everyone with wide, slightly-panicked eyes. "Y'okay, monkey?" he murmurs, squeezing her a little tighter. "Danno's got you. It's okay if you're scared."

"I'm not scared," Grace says. "I'm mad that Mr. Gibbon ate my rabbit."

"That's the spirit," a voice says from behind them, and Danny's not ashamed to admit that the relief flooding through him is at least as strong as the fury, because _fuck you_, Steve McGarrett, learn to answer your _fucking phone._

Kono lets go of Danny and instead spins, punching Steve hard across the jaw. He takes the hit in stride and grabs her hand on the recoil. She's trembling and literally spitting blood, but she lets him drag her forward for a quick, hard hug, and she hisses, "God _damnit, _Boss, answer your phone next time."

"Sorry," he says, sincerely enough until he follows it up with, "I didn't realize there was etiquette to the end of the world," and Danny sighs because yep. He called it.

Steve looks over Kono's shoulder and meets Danny's eyes. Danny nods once: yes, asshole, I'm okay, fuck you for worrying me. Steve nods: good.

They regroup in one of the holding cells, where Danny is sort of surprised to see Kamekona and less surprised to see Mary Ann. Even weirder is that Mary Ann seems unshakably cool, leaning back in the only chair with her feet curled under her butt, looking for all the world like this is an everyday occurrence in the life of a McGarrett child (which, given Steve and all his Big Issues, is actually a possibility) and she's just pissed off it interrupted her _The Price is Right_ marathon.

"I fucking hate Hawaii," she says with a world-weary sigh, and Danny tosses her an agreeing nod. He thinks idly that this whole experience had _better_ earn him one night a week with Grace, because _he's_ not the one who brought them to literally the only place in the world currently suffering from an infestation of the undead.

"Right," Steve says, talking over his sister, "so I've been in touch with Max Bergman at the morgue, and he says if we can get him a body he can do an autopsy and try to figure some of this out. Apparently he has this hiding place behind one of the bookshelves that he had built after the Chief of Police kept coming in unannounced and frightening him."

"Of course he does," Chin mutters, shaking his head.

"Have you heard from the governor?" Kono asks, looking mildly hopeful but mostly resigned. "Is there some sort of plan being developed, some protocol we should be following?"

"_Please_ tell me you guys have an In Case of The Pineapple file somewhere that only the HPD and the government knows about," Danny adds. "That would just be icing on the fucking cake."

"Cuss kitty," Grace says, sounding dazed.

"_Flipping_ cake," Danny amends.

Steve casts him a Look, one that rests somewhere between No Ties In Hawaii and _You're_ The Backup on the spectrum of the facial expressions that Danny is rapidly becoming fluent in. "I don't know about any protocols," he says, which surprises exactly no one since he can't even remember to recite the Miranda rights on a _normal_ day, never mind the end of the world (/Hawaii). "I haven't heard from the governor, but if there's a way to get off this island . . ."

"They'll be headed to her first," Chin completes for him, nodding. "I don't know though, brah. It seems risky. There's no safe way to get all of us to wherever she might be, if she's even still alive. And there's no telling how safe that place will be, even if we get there."

"Right," Steve agrees. "We can't all go, and we can't stay away once we get there." He glances over at Danny, who is slowly reading the thoughts forming on his partner's face and sighs.

"Which means that the majority of the group has the stay here and the rest of us have to go kidnap the governor under the guise of calling it a rescue mission," Danny deduces, rubbing a hand at his forehead.

Fucking _Tuesdays_, man.

"And someone has to get a corpse to the morgue," Kono adds.

"Okay," Steve says. "So then here's the plan. Chin and Kono go help Max and Danny and I will try to find the governor. Nobody die. Sound good?"

Danny nods and Chin nods and Kono nods and it's nice, synced, all that _ohana_ stuff, a reassurance of something resembling normal in the face of the world all going one hundred percent to shit.

.x.

Her brother and his little band of merry men are all go-team-break when Mary says, "Um, I hope you aren't forgetting that someone has to stay here to protect the regular people." She unfolds her legs and raises an eyebrow in Steve's direction, and fuck him for being all Man In Charge, anyway. "I mean, I can handle myself in a fight and all, but I think that at least _one_ of you ninjas should be around in case shit gets heavy, 'cause I'm like a buck ten and I just saw my ten-year-old paperboy pick up a body builder with one hand."

Steve shakes his head, looking so much like their father that she wants to hit him on principle. "There aren't enough people to spread out that thin. No one can go anywhere alone, not if we don't want to be turned into-"

"Zombies," his partner supplies helpfully. "Pineapple zombies if you want to be official."

Steve throws Danny a look that's part "shut up" and part "I love you," if Mary is reading this right, and she is, because they've never been close exactly but she can still read her brother like he's a fucking _Twilight_ book. "If you barricade the doors and windows you should be fine," Steve informs her in his best Navy SEAL voice. "And anyway, our man Kamekona can help you out."

"Super," Mary says flatly. "Me and Shamu against the world. Rock on." She glances at the large man in the corner, who has stayed mostly silent this whole time and is currently engaged in a staring contest with Danny's daughter, what's-her-name.

"Mary," Steve warns.

"Don't 'Mary,' me, asshole. This is bullshit. We're not all fucking Navy SEALS, okay, sorry I'm not gung-ho with the idea of cutting off people's _heads_ while you go out and act like a retard with a death wish!"

There's a long silence in which all non-suicidal parties are probably agreeing with her. Steve blows a breath out of his nose, like he is just _so_ put-upon to have her as a sister, and she's honestly not sure how much of the anger burning through her right now is instinctive rebellion at being told what to do and how much is just icy cold fucking _fear_ that the world is ending and her brother wants to leave the safe place in favor of the place where people, actual decaying, _rabid people_, want to eat him.

There also may be a tiny little part of her that is weeping because she's scared shitless and she just wants her big badass Navy SEAL of a brother to stay with her in case something goes wrong. He's an insufferable asshat who suffers from _the_ worst case of emotional constipation she's ever seen, but he's also her big brother, and he looks out for her even when he wants to strangle her, and she could use that side of him right about now.

"I can help," the tall balding white guy says hesitantly into the silence, and Mary is like, great, I'm stuck here with Shamu and a grown-up, live-action Doug Funny. _Awesome._

"Who are you, again?" she asks cuttingly. "Seriously, Doug Funny, do you even live on the island or did you just get lucky and hitch a ride with Lieutenant-Commander Dickwad over here?"

Kono coughs into her hand and looks away, and Danny reaches surreptitiously behind Steve's back to flash her a thumb's up. Steve looks vaguely horrified, in that way that he always does when she shoots her mouth off in public, but fuck him, and fuck Doug Funny, and fuck this fucking _island_, okay, and while she's at it, fuck her father for bringing them here in the first place.

And for God's sake, fuck _pineapples._ Fuck them so _fucking hard._

Maybe Doug Funny is a nice guy and maybe he'll be handy in a fight, but he's not Steve, and she doesn't want some two-bit replacement, she wants her _brother._ And fine, maybe that makes her selfish, and maybe she's the only one here not being completely cool-calm-collected about this, but you know what, there are human beings outside turning into _zombies_ and in the fact of that, she's really not that worried about her social image.

"We'll come back as soon as we can," Chin says soothingly, the way that he says everything. Seriously, that dude is like Mr. Zen all the time and always has been, as long as she can remember. He used to come over when he was a rookie under her father and he was always _aloha, brah, let me sooth you with my calming voice_. "It shouldn't take more than an hour or two to get to the morgue and back. Then we'll be back."

Everyone is looking at her with her father's favorite expression, the one that says, 'Wow, Mary, _be_ a bigger fucking disappointment to the human race,' and she wants to tell them all to fuck right off but instead curls her legs up and wraps her arms around her knees and shrugs. "Whatever," she says flatly. "Fine. Go outside and get eaten, see if I give a shit."

She stands up and leaves the room, violently cursing everything she can come up with of to curse, and tries not to think about the fact that she had a pineapple smoothie for breakfast.


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Notes:** This story is getting out of hand.

**Title:** Pineapples Killed My Neighbors; or, This Would Never Happen in New Jersey

**Author:** ohladybegood/dress without sleeves

**Rating:** R for language, eventual porn

**Spoilers:** Um, none, and also all? Nothing specific, but I'd rather play it safe.

**Warnings:** Here there be zombies, and some fairly gross blood, and also and excess of bad language, because Mary Ann McGarrett has the mouth of a sailor.

**Disclaimer:** If I owned Hawaii Five-0, it would be even gayer than it already is. LOL, wait, that's not possible, this show is so completely unreal.

**Summary:** Hawaii has a zombie problem, and it's really messing with Danny Williams' workweek.

Pineapples Killed My Neighbors;

or, This Would Never Happen in New Jersey

Danny does this thing sometimes, when he's super focused and not paying attention, where he runs his tongue along the bottom his lip and bites down a little, as if he can squeeze answers out with his teeth. It's subconscious habit, one he doesn't even realize he has.

It drives Steve fucking _crazy._ They're literally at the end of the world, or at least _their_ world, driving down Main Street and hitting pedestrians like they're bowling, and all he can think about is the little wet patch that Danny's left on the corner of his mouth.

"Hey, Jeff Gordon, watch the road, would you?" Danny asks, glancing over at him with raised eyebrows. "I know I'm gorgeous, but let's not end this in a fiery crash on the side of the road, huh?"

"Oh yeah, I can't keep my eyes off you," Steve bites back, but he's thinking, no seriously, I can't keep my eyes off you, please stop _licking your lips_ _you goddamn tease._

They're taking Chin's car to Steve's, partly because Steve keeps an excellent collection of knives in the cupboard under the stairs and partly because, apocalypse or no apocalypse, the idea of driving Chin's Prius around for possibly the rest of his life is too awful for Steve to imagine, a fact that Danny calls him on about five seconds after he realizes that Steve has no intention of taking Chin's car back to Five-0 headquarters.

"So _that's_ what this is about," Danny laughs almost gleefully. "You don't want your big badass image to be tarnished by driving a girly car? Afraid your Army boyfriends will tease you when they catch you on the news? _Be_ a bigger stereotype, McGarrett, seriously, I dare you."

Steve reaches into the pantry and grabs a loaf of bread, tossing it to Danny who looks bemused but tosses it into a plastic bag anyway, along with the rest of the supplies. That's the best thing about Danny; no matter what you throw at him, he really more or less rolls with it.

Of course, he'll give you an earful while he does, but Steve's become sort of . . . fond of the long rants that start with Danny bitching about dangling suspects off roofs and somehow end up with them arguing about where the term _shaman_ came from (it's Siberia, no matter what Danny says about Native Americans).

"I was in the _Navy_," Steve corrects, angling his knife in warning, and then too late realizes his mistake as Danny's face breaks into a triumphant grin.

"Oh right, I'm sorry," Danny amends respectfully, "afraid of getting teased by your _Navy_ boyfriends."

"No, that's not—"

"Hey, you chose your battle, babe, not me."

"Oh, fuck you."

They do that thing they just stand for a second and grin at each other. And the thing right, is that Steve? Not gay. And he's not "not gay" in that closeted way that most men who are sort of maybe in love with a dude are "not gay," but he's _actually_ not gay. He's not sure what the Danny thing is, except that there is just something about the blonde midget currently looking at him with a shit-eating grin that just . . . gets under his skin.

It's not like a gay thing. It's like . . . a partner thing. It's like a _Danny_ thing.

"I'd just like to point out," Danny notes as they start to load up the car and pull out of the driveway, "that this zombie shit? Would _not_ happen in Jersey."

"Why?" Steve asks without taking his eyes off the road. "You don't eat fruit in Jersey?"

"Don't eat—we eat _fruit_, Steve. Even citrus on occasion. Show me an apple and I'll show you the Garden of Eden, okay." He shakes his head in disgust. "Don't eat fruit. We eat fruit, motherfucker. It's just that this island has a weird obsession with that spikey yellow abomination."

"Abomination?"

"Yes, abomination. _Abomination._ It looks like a retarded grenade and it tastes like lemon piss, and you put it on pizza. _Pizza,_ Steve. You want a little lemon piss in your sorbet, fine, I can't stop you, but your pizza, that's like . . . _criminal_. This whole island should be rounded up and pun . . . fuck, man. I didn't mean that the way it sounded."

"It's okay," Steve says preemptively.

"No, I didn't think. This is you're _home_. I'm sorry."

Steve keeps his eyes determinedly on the road and keeps his mouth shut. He's not sure how to say _home is where your family is_ without it sounding like too much like _my home is with you._

.x.

Grace likes Kamekona, partly because he's huge and partly because he gives her free shave ice and partly because he lets her sit on his shoulders without ever getting tired. Right now she likes him because he is calm, and not calm in the way that her Mom and Step Stan are pretending to be calm, talking in low tones in the corner, but _really_ calm, sitting with his back against the wall humming softly.

She sits next to him, her tiny body fitted neatly into the space between his side and the wall. Kamekona grins down at her like a big friendly teddy bear and she shifts a little closer. "Aren't you scared?" she asks. She's not exactly sure what's happening, because no one will tell her, but it's obvious that it's Really Really Bad, worse than anything that has ever happened before.

"Scared?" Kamekona asks, smiling down at her, "Nah. Why be afraid of what you can't control? No way, little haole."

Sometimes Kira at school calls Grace a haole in the kind of low, nasty voice that makes her blush and feel small and stupid, but she likes the way Kamekona says it, almost like a nickname.

She wonders if Kira is like her rabbit was, and she thinks for a fleeting second that it would serve her right if she was. Then she feels bad for thinking that because Danno says it's never good to wish bad things for anyone, not even people who make you cry.

"Then I'm not scared either," Grace decides. Kamekona offers her a high-five and then goes back to humming, quiet, soothing. Grace curls up against him and waits for her Danno to come home.

.x.

Rachel takes the cigarette when Mary offers, though she quit years ago and never liked menthols in the first place. Still, it's the end of her world, and she'll go crazy if she doesn't find something to do with her hands.

"So you're Danny's ex," Mary says frankly, kicking her feet up onto Steve's desk and giving Rachel a blunt once-over. "Be honest, thought you'd be shorter. And scrappier."

Rachel raises her eyebrows delicately. "Scrappier?"

"Yeah, you know. Like Danny and my asshole of a brother, aka Hawaii's very own Scrappy and Scooby fucking Doo."

Rachel lowers herself onto Steve's couch and takes a long, thoughtful drag of the cigarette she's holding. She's torn between being horrified and amused by Mary Ann McGarrett. She can't be younger than twenty-four or -five and yet she's sitting here biting her nails and flicking ashes on the floor like a rebellious eighteen-year-old, her body tense and angry. Even her freckles seem splashed and rebellious; the opposite of everything Rachel has come to know about Steve McGarrett, the military man.

"You're nothing like your brother," she notes, instead of responding.

Mary snorts. "That's what he wants you to think, the fucker," she says flatly. "Steve's just as much as a head case as I am, he just spends so much time trying to pretend he doesn't hate our Dad that he doesn't have time for anything else."

"And you . . .?"

"Don't bother so much with the trying."

Rachel nods thoughtfully. "I see," she says quietly, privately thinking that this woman would make an excellent case study. She wonders if she can convince Danny to convince Steve to convince Mary to let her do a few sessions a week, just for a year or so, to see what they could come up with in a study of parent-child relations and the long term effects on adult development.

"So just out of idle interest," Mary says abruptly, dragging her feet off the desk and not bothering to pick up the papers she pulls down with them, "how do you feel about the whole Steve/Danny thing?"

Rachel frowns. "They seem to work well together," she says slowly, not understanding. "Steve seems fine with Grace. That's about the extent of my involvement."

Mary waves her words away. "No no, not the Five-0 thing, that's just Steve's ego trip. I mean the _Steve and Danny_ thing."

"I'm not following."

Mary raises one eyebrow and puts her cigarette out on Steve's mouse pad. "The _Steve and Danny thing_," she says again, slowly, this time miming a hand job with one hand and a blowjob with the other. "C'mon, are you serious? I'd never seen an actual human being's eyes turn into hearts until I saw my brother look at that guy. You can't tell me you haven't noticed. Steve said you were like a psychotherapist or whatever, isn't it like, your job to tell people who they secretly want to fuck? I thought you'd be all over the Narnia-deep closet case that is my brother."

"Danny's not gay," Rachel says reflexively, not sure why she's blushing or why the room has suddenly gotten five degrees warmer.

Mary blows out a big breath and shakes her head, eyes rolling towards the ceiling. "Sure," she agrees sarcastically. "He's straight as an arrow headed right for my brother's ass."

Rachel chokes, coughing out smoke and putting her cigarette out on the windowsill. She has absolutely _no_ response available in her repertoire, neither professional _nor_ personal. So she just coughs and stares at Mary thinks for a second about the way says, "This is my partner, Steve," the way he had once said _this is my wife, Rachel._

After a moment, she reaches out and takes another cigarette, inhaling deeply. "Well."

Mary is grinning at her, but her face is taut and scared and sad, a little, in a way that Rachel—for all her years of schooling and the two degrees that hang in her office—can't quite interpret. "Men, amirite?" she asks dryly, reaching into her pocket and pulling out a flask.

Rachel blows out what might be a laugh and might be eleven years of marriage suddenly making sense. "Have you got enough of that to share?" she asks, and holds out a hand.

.x.

"Do you remember," Chin says in a low voice as they drop off the roof into a back alley behind the morgue, dragging the body of a sixty-year-old woman with them, "your seventeenth birthday?"

Kono blows her hair out of her face and looks at Chin with the same face she used to give her mother when she was caught coming in late from curfew. "You mean the one where my mother found my bong and as punishment gave all my presents to the thrift store? Just v aguely. Why?"

"Well—" Chin hefts the body up by the armpits, which is hard because everything keeps wanting to fall apart but Max was very specific that the it needed to be intact. "I feel like I should mention that I was the one who told her you were smoking."

Kono's jaw drops and she reaches out to punch him in the shoulder, hard. "That is _cold_, brah. Ice fucking cold." She pauses for a few minutes as they manage to twist and hove the corpse through the single unlocked door and then blows out a half-laugh. "Yeah, well. I was the one who got Malia put on the no-fly list for drunken behavior."

She doesn't meet her eyes when she speaks, because she knows he has this weirdly protective thing going about his ex-fiancée and how she's not that bad and that it's hard to be involved with someone so disgraced that their own family refuses to speak to them, but she's not ashamed of it. Ohana means _family_, and that is all she fucking wrote, as far as Kono is concerned. Chin can forgive all he wants, that doesn't mean she has to.

She feels a flash of anger as she looks down at the rotting corpse she is currently carrying. It's not the old woman's fault that Ben is dead. It's not any of the infected people's faults that Ben is dead. It's the pineapple's fault. It's the farmer who grew the pineapple's fault. It's the grocery store's fault. It's the Bass family bad luck's fault.

Mostly, of course, it's Kono's fault, because she handed him the pineapple and she bashed his brains in with a paperweight and then snapped his neck. But it's easier to blame the sick people. It hurts less to be angry than to be guilty.

It takes her a moment to realize that Chin is laughing. She looks up at him in surprise. "Yeah, I knew about that," he confesses, and she could swear he sounds almost . . . cheerful. He uses one hand to push open the doors to Max's lair and they shuffle in together. "Ethically, I'm disappointed in you. Emotionally, I'm a little proud."

Before she can answer, Max pushes aside his little bookcase hideaway and emerges, a small, tight smile on his face. "Hello! You've brought a specimen. Wonderful. Well. Please place her in the usual location."

Kono rolls her eyes but they do what they're told, and then Chin disappears into the hallway to call the boss. Kono slides down the wall and sits with her knees tucked into her chest, eyes closed as she waits.

After a long silence, Max sighs and steps away from the table. "This specimen is not good enough. The epidermis is too far in the decaying process. I need something more fresh."

Kona blinks at him. "More _fresh?_ Doc, we killed that one on the way _here. _It doesn't _get_ more fresh."

Max shrugs. "I cannot conclude anything with scientific merit based on this body. The epidermis has lost too much of its cellular structure and the amount of tissue damage. I need one with a slower rate of decomposition."

Chin chooses that moment to walk back in, expression grim. "Steve and Danny are outside the municipal building but it's . . . utter carnage. They're at a construction site across the street doing somre recon."

"The boss is actually waiting to form a plan? It must be bad." She sighs. This morning she had been angry and the adrenaline of everything that happened had gotten her through, but now she feels tired, slow, and _God_ just . . . fucking sad. "In other good news, the good doctor needs a 'fresher specimen.' Apparently this one is decomposing too fast."

"They're _all_ decomposing that fast."

Kono shrugs. "That's what I said."

Chin sighs and rubs at his face. "Well, all right. One thing at a time, I guess. Ready to try again?"

Kono picks up her machete and grins.

.x.

_Fucked_ is pretty much the only way to describe the situation that Danny has found himself in. They're barricaded in the governor's office on the second floor, safe for now but with no way out. Because of course Steve would stop to consider how he's getting in without thinking it all the way through to, say, _the exit strategy._

"I hate Tuesdays," Danny mutters to himself, perching on the edge of the governor's desk. She and Steve are standing at the window, looking down at the city like that scene from _The Lion King._ Danny entertains himself imagining the governor putting her hand on Steve's shoulder and saying, "This could all be yours, Lieutenant Commander . . . everything the light touches."

Danny fiddles with a paperweight on the governor's desk. The good news had been that she was alive, locked in her office and royally fucking pissed that all this was going down and she could do nothing to stop it. If there is one thing that Danny is learning about his governor, it's that she didn't get to where she is by playing nicely.

The bad news is that they're all trapped and the mainland has more or less surrounded the island with ships ready to blow them all up if need be.

"The largest group of survivors are at the hospital, I think," Steve is saying. "Chin has a contact there. Apparently pineapple wasn't on the menu today, and once the news broke they barricaded the doors."

Governor Jameson nods once. "Good. After last year's shooting that place is locked up tighter than a prison. They'll be safe."

"For now. But in two days? Three? We've got to get the civilians off the island. We can't just hide here and hope this all goes away."

"And there's no way to get word to those that _aren't_ at the hospital," Danny adds. "The terrified families that are locked in their basements right now are totally out of reach. We'd have to reach them in person."

Steve is wearing his Thinking Face, the one that usually means that Danny is going to get shot at. "Right," he says, "well, we can't worry about that right now. Let's focus on the people in the hospital and we'll go from there."

"Oh good," Danny bites back sarcastically, "so all we have to do is fight our way through a horde of zombies, figure out a way to get the survivors all safely off the island, go back to Five-0 headquarters and get _our_ people, who, I might add, include a little girl and a whale of a man, and all without letting the governor get bitten? Well, that's a relief. I thought we might be facing a challenge."

Steve just grins. There's a little drop of blood at the corner of his eye and without thinking Danny reaches irritably out to brush it away with his thumb. He means the gesture to be annoyed but it ends up being sort of . . . tender, which is weird for a myriad of reasons, so he pulls his way quickly, awkwardly.

"Right," he says quickly, to cover up his embarrassment and the weird knot starting in his stomach, "let's get this show on the road, then."

.x.

When Rachel leaves, Mary leans back in Steve's chair and breathes, slow and deep. If she keeps her eyes closed she can ignore her slowly sallow-ing skin and the way she feels fragile and brittle and slow, like she'll puncture if she gets poked too hard.

"Fuck," she murmurs. She fingers her phone and considers calling Steve, but doesn't, because he can't bail her out of this one and she knows how much it would kill him to fail when he tries anyway. Sometimes he can be a fucking dick-wad of an asshole, but he loves her, and she knows that, has always known it. He's an emotionally constipated idiot who would literally tear the world in half for her, and she's always taken advantage of that, _always._ She's let him bail her out of jail and talk her out of trouble with their Dad and once, in college, she's pretty sure he paid off the host of a party she was at that got busted for cocaine to say he'd never seen her before.

She doesn't always like him a whole lot, but he's her brother, and just about the only thing in this world that she loves, so for the first time in her life, Mary is going to do fucking _right_ by her family, even if it kills her.

She chokes on a despairing laugh. Even if it kills her. Yeah. Right.

So instead of calling Steve, she takes a deep breath and dials Chin. He answers on the second ring. "Everything okay over there?"

She feels sick and furious and so fucking _scared_ as she laughs, spinning dizzily. Some of her hair catches on the leather and falls out like loose string. "You gotta come get me," she says, and is proud of the way her voice doesn't shake.

.x.

Chin hangs up slowly, not taking his eyes of the screen. He has this picture in his head of Mary at fifteen, her hair braided into two pigtails, looking up at him through these dark aviator sunglasses that swallowed her face. She'd thought she was such hot shit, he remembers. A little smartass since she learned what the word meant.

"Y'all right, cos?" Kono asks, pushing herself up off the wall. They'd gotten another body for Max, killed it as they were coming through the door, but the doctor had taken one look at it and shoot his head, so his cousin had spent the better part of five minutes angrily ripping up paper while Max played the piano. He doesn't say anything, not for long enough that Kono stands up and walks his way. "Cos?" she repeats.

"I, um." His voice is scratchy and he coughs. "I have to go back to headquarters and get Mary."

"Mary? Why?"

He makes himself meet his cousin's eyes. He can't quite make himself admit that she's already dead so instead he says, softly, "Because I've found Max's slow-decomposing specimen."


	3. Chapter 3

**Author's Notes:** Um, yeah, so, last chapter before the epilogue. Sorry this took so long, there were a few scenes that kept fighting me. Also… I'm pretty lazy almost all of the time.

**Title:** Pineapples Killed My Neighbors; or, This Would Never Happen in New Jersey

**Author:** ohladybegood/dress without sleeves

**Rating:** R for language.

**Spoilers:** Um, none, and also all? Nothing specific, but I'd rather play it safe.

**Warnings:** Here there be zombies, and some fairly gross blood, and also and excess of bad language, because Mary Ann McGarrett has the mouth of a sailor.

**Disclaimer:** If I owned Hawaii Five-0, it would be even gayer than it already is. LOL, wait, that's not possible, this show is so completely unreal.

**Summary:** Hawaii has a zombie problem, and it's really messing with Danny Williams' workweek.

Pineapples Killed My Neighbor; or,

This Would Never Happen In New Jersey

"Try not to freak out," Mary says as Chin lifts her onto Max's table and she meets Kono's eyes. "I know I'm pretty hot right now."

Kono swallows. She's not really sure that she can obey that request, because Mary McGarrett, who she has been familiar with since she was _fourteen_, is lying on the autopsy table in the morgue, slowly decomposing. Her skin is grey and literally flaking off in long, neat strips, revealing muscle and sinew.

Kono doesn't let herself throw up. Mary deserves better.

Instead of vomiting all over her shoes, Kono simply looks away, though this feels weak and somehow . . . disrespectful. She forces her eyes back to Mary but can't hold the glance; Mary is falling apart, literally _falling apart_, and she can't—all she can think of is how badly she wants a shave ice, because shave ice feels normal and comforting and real, so much more real than everything else that has happened today.

But the shave ice in her mind can't compete with the woman sitting before her, shaking, eyes sunken and lips chapped and dry. She holds a cigarette between her shaking fingers and when she breathes out the smoke slips through holes in her throat.

"Mary," Kono tries to say, but she can't get anything else out, because tears and bile and _I'msosorry_ clog in her throat.

Chin squeezes her shoulder as he passes, too hard, so hard it hurts, and when she looks at him he has a stone expression on his face that says nothing but _oh god this hurts._

"It's okay," Mary says with a shaky laugh, and for a second Kono almost believes her, but then the laughing doesn't stop, it just gets louder and louder and more hysterical until Mary isn't laughing anymore, she is sobbing, she is _bawling_, hands shaking so badly that she drops her cigarette into her lap and doesn't even notice it burning her flesh away. Her teeth are chattering and her ragged, stringy hair is falling out in clumps and despite the blood and the muscle and the bone poking through Chin pushes past Kono and does the brave thing, embracing her like he can't see her arteries through her paper-thin skin. Mary clings to him, fingers digging into his shirt as she cries, her only words an endless stream of, "Fuckfuckfuckfuck_fuck._"

Kono turns her face away, because she does not know where to look.

After a few minutes, Max coughs quietly. "I am sorry to interrupt this emotional catharsis," he says, almost . . . _gently_, for Max. "But I'm afraid I should restrain you, in case your mind gives out before the procedure is complete."

Mary lets go of Chin slowly, nodding, and looks over his shoulder at Kono as Max begins tying her wrists to the table. "Listen, don't . . . " she coughs, looks guilty, then closes her eyes. "Don't call Steve, okay? Not until it's . . ."

"He'll want to talk to you," Kono says quickly, and her chest aches, her chest _aches_ where her heart is, where her heart was, where her heart should be.

"Mary, he'll want to say . . ." Chin lets the sentence hang, awkward and horrible between them.

"Goodbye?" Mary supplies dryly. Her hands are tied down, so she can't wipe at her cheeks when tears spill onto them. "Yeah, look, I'm, uh . . . I'm shit at goodbyes. And what's there to say, anyway? Hey big bro, love ya, thanks for the good times? Nah. Just, you know, tell him I fought the power or whatever." Her voice gets a little softer and she refuses to meet anybody's eyes. "Tell him I wasn't a little bitch about it, okay?"

For a second, Kono is torn, wanting to do whatever Mary wants for as long as she has the sense to want anything at all; but her brother is Kono's boss, and more than that, her friend, so she reaches into her pocket, pulls out her phone, and dials Steve.

.x.

They've just made it to the hospital when Steve's phone rings; Danny and the governor are in the lobby, Danny standing with his arms folded and frown on his face like he's The Bodyguard in that Whitney Houston movie and the governor walking around like this is just another day at the office and she's got shit to do.

"Yeah?" he asks, nesting the phone between his shoulder and his ear as he sharpens his knife on the metal armrest of one of the chairs.

"Hey boss," Kono says, but her voice sounds off, like she's far away.

Steve stiffens, excusing himself from the group. "What's wrong?"

There's a long silence in which no one says anything, and then he hears a familiar huff of exasperation as his sister grabs the phone. "Yeah, so, listen," she says, her voice rough, like she's been crying. "Turns out I got the fucking zombie bug, and Doc here is going to use me to figure out what's happening. Kono thought we should have some fucking love scene or whatever, so."

The words go into Steve's head and bounce around for a moment, not registering, just playing over and over. But that's ridiculous, he thinks. Of course Mary isn't sick. They'd have known it by now. It would have struck by now, she would have been—he'd have known when he was with her, and he wouldn't have—there's some way to reverse—

"Okay," he says slowly, "okay, it's okay, Mary, it's all right. We're going to fix this. Danny and I are at the hospital right now; there's got to be something we can—"

"Give it up, Steve-o," she interrupts, and her voice is . . . _gentle_, almost, sweet, like she's—like she's being _kind_ to him, feeling sorry, but that's not right because there's no reason for her to feel sorry. Steve is going to _get her out of this._ He's been doing it his whole life, cleaning up her shit, fixing her mistakes before anyone noticed, and this is no different. He's at a _hospital_, for Christ's sake, and this disease is—what—_fruit_-borne? No fucking way. It's absurd. It's ridiculous. Mary is not going to get taken out by a fucking _pineapple._

"No," he hears himself say, but it's like there is water in his ears and everything is fuzzy. He can vaguely make out Danny walking toward him, but Steve doesn't move or look at him when he starts asking quietly what's wrong, doesn't flinch away from or sink into the firm hand on his elbow like he usually does (depending on how terrified he is at any given moment that he is going to turn around and say _don't touch me unless you mean it_) because right now Steve does not have time for Danny, or the governor, or the whole of fucking Hawaii because Mary is . . . _Mary_ is—

"No, Mary, we're not giving up, okay? We're not. I can fix this. I'm _going _to fix this."

Mary's laugh is small and watery. "Don't be such a dipshit, dipshit," she says. "I'm already falling apart at the seams. Even if you could find some way to stop the virus from spreading any more, I wouldn't be able to get five feet out of my door before I fell apart."

"Well then why didn't you say something _earlier_?" he grits out, though of course she wouldn't, this is so fucking _typical_ of Mary, keeping all her fuckups under wraps until it's almost too late and he has to sweep in at the last minute and save the day. "Jesus, Mary, why didn't you say something when you first started to—"

"Oh, fuck off," she snaps. "It was too fucking late the second I had breakfast this morning and you know it. Don't fucking yell at _me_ because you're pissed."

Steve falls silent. His fingers are gripping the phone so tight that they're white and starting to ache, but he can't loosen his grip and all he can think about is that time when Mary was thirteen and she asked if he thought Dad still loved them now that their Mom was dead and he'd told her nastily that maybe he would if she wasn't such a colossal fucking deadbeat.

She'd forgiven him, he knows that, he'd known the second he said it that she would forgive him, because that's what they _do_. They poke and stab at each other until they break the skin and when they do they don't apologize but they stop poking for a while and that's enough.

Mary sighs. "Look, bro, don't . . . it's not . . . I'm okay. Really. Shit happens, you know? And I'm—I mean, if Dr Frankenstein here does his thing, maybe at least I can help some people, right? It won't all be for nothing? Right?"

And this is her gift to him, he realizes. This is her offering, her fix-this-because-you-can't-fix-that, and he wants to jam it right back down her throat but he can't because she is his sister and she is _asking._ "Right," he manages, throat dry. "Yeah, Contrary, you'll do good."

She laughs quietly, a little sad. "You haven't called me Contrary since before Mom died," she notes softly.

"I'm sorry."

"Nah. It's a shitty nickname anyway."

Neither of them says anything until Steve hears Max's staccato voice in the background: "We're ready."

Mary breathes in sharply. "All right, Steve-o, that's my ride. But listen. There's something I want you to get through you're fucking numbskull of a brain before I jump that train, all right?" Steve can't say anything because if he opens his mouth he's going to scream or vomit or hit something or all three, so he settles on a nod that she can't see. Mary seems to sense it because she continues, "when you hang up the phone, turn to the man standing next to you and nut the fuck up, you got it?"

His reaction is instinctual: "What are you—"

"Don't pull that shit, this is my fucking deathbed you asshole," Mary cuts him off. "We both know you're coo-coo for fucking cocoa puffs over that guy, and this is the universe giving you the green light. Time is short and wrought with motherfucking pineapples, so strap on a set of balls and get your fucking _gay_ on."

He's not sure if he wants to reach through the phone and hug her or hit her, but that's the standard feeling he gets when it comes to his sister, so he just lets out a watery laugh and says, "Jesus, Mary." Then, quieter, "Okay."

"Okay," she echoes, and then adds in a softer voice, "I love you, you big retard."

His hand shakes as he pulls the phone away from his ear and says, "I love you too," just before the line goes dead.

.x.

Steve hangs up the phone slowly, and Danny takes a step closer to him, crowding his space, not at all sure what he is supposed to be doing, what Steve wants or needs from him, where he should stand, what he should say.

"Hey," he begins slowly, his hand dropping to the small of Steve's back like he's guiding him, "you all right?"

And that's a stupid fucking question, he thinks immediately. Of course he's not all right. But he doesn't know what else he's supposed to say; where the fuck is the Hallmark card for Sorry The Pineapples Got Your Sister?

_Jesus_.

He opens his mouth to try again—_do you need anything?_—but then shuts up because Steve is just standing there, looking at him, his eyes dark and his mouth a taught frown, and Danny's first thought is that he looks . . . _hungry._ Steve's hand reaches out and tightens on Danny's arm, and Danny lets it, because Steve needs this, this contact, the terrible reminder that this is real, that he's not dreaming.

"_Fuck_," Steve grits out, and before Danny can ask what he means their mouths are crashing together, and oh, that's what.

He doesn't move at first, because he's never—that is, guys aren't really his thing, never have been, nothing against them of course but he's always been more of a—

But _oh,_ there is Steve's hand, running up his arm to anchor behind his neck and pull him in closer, and his tongue, running along the bottom of Danny's mouth and then his teeth biting down, and his fingers everywhere, everywhere, seriously how many hands does he—and wherever he touches there's this little trail of heat and goose bumps and, and, and—and _promise_—and Danny winces because that sounds so fucking _gay_—

_You're making out with a dude, I think that ship has sailed,_ he thinks, and then realizes that yes, he is, he's kissing back, quite vehemently actually, shoving Steve back against one of the walls and kissing him so hard that it _hurts_. And he hopes it hurts Steve, too, a little, hopes it's just as jarring and terrifying and addicting as everything that Steve has put Danny through in the past year, hopes it tastes like car chases and shark tanks and ten million dollars.

Eventually he manages to pull himself away and Steve slumps against the wall, hunched enough to rest his forehead against Danny's. The moment feels important and Danny doesn't know how to fill it so he says, "I'm sorry about your sister."

Steve nods and grips the back of Danny's neck a little tighter.

.x.

Everyone is quiet after Miss Mary leaves. She was like Grace's rabbit. No one tells her this exactly but when she asks Kamekona his hummed song gets sadder and he gathers her up in his arms and says, "hey now, little haole, we all gotta go sometime."

"What's that song you're singing?" she asks, because she doesn't like to think about Miss Mary being like her rabbit. She doesn't like to think much about her rabbit at all, because then she thinks about the sound it's little body had made when Step Steve hit it with the shovel.

Grace isn't worried about her Danno, because Danno is the quickest bravest strongest cop of all of them and he loves her so he's not going to leave her alone. But she worries about Miss Mary. Miss Mary doesn't seem as strong as Danno or Uncle Steve or even Kamekona. Miss Mary mostly seems mad and scared.

"It's called Palekeiko," Kamekona tells her. He always talks to her like she's his age, not like she's little. Grace likes the grown-up feeling it gives her. "It means 'paradise.' It's a lullaby."

"What are the words in English?" Sometimes Grace gets frustrated because she doesn't understand the other language on the island. She knows a few words, like _aloha_ and _ohana_, but you can't go five steps without learning _aloha_ and she only learned _ohana_ from her favorite movie, _Lilo & Stitch_.

Kamekona smiles. "Can't be translated, little haole. It's pure Hawai'i. You'd lose the magic if you tried to say it in that goofy language of yours."

"My language isn't goofy," Grace defends automatically. "English is the language of business. Step Stan says."

"Maybe," Kamekona agrees, "but it sure isn't the language of our island paradise, eh?"

Grace rolls her eyes. "We're locked up in my Dad's office and everyone keeps turning like my rabbit," she tells him. "That's not paradise."

"Not paradise?" Kamekona asks, looking bewildered. "We got friends, we got food, and we all got our lives. What else do you need?"

Grace grins toothily. "Some shave ice would be cool," she says, and Kamekona's laugh comes from deep in his belly as he offers her a high-five.

.x.

The thing about Rachel's relationship with Danny is that it has _always _been one of contention. In the beginning, that had been part of the draw—they bickered, fought, pulled at one another until all of their defenses were down and then rummaged ruthlessly through whatever was left. It had felt liberating. It had felt like pain and pleasure and absolute nakedness.

When their marriage had started to fall apart, their fights lost that liberating feeling and began more and more to feel like forced exposure, like an invasion, like bad sunburn.

Things with Stan aren't like that. They've never _been_ like that. They'd come together slowly, not in that desperate, hungry way she'd fallen into bed and love with Danny, but with the easy warmth of two adults who knew better. Stan had been married once before; his daughter Mallory was sixteen and lived in New York with his ex-wife Nancy. They speak twice a week on the phone, cordial but not close, a fact that Rachel knows burned Stan to the bones. His distant relationship with his daughter is what made him so sweet with Grace, so eager to love her and be loved back.

He can speak to Nancy without bitterness or anger; they calmly discuss Mallory's expenses and holiday plans with the tone of polite detachment Rachel uses with clients. When she'd expressed envy that he could maintain a working relationship with someone he'd used to love, Stan had shaken his head. "Being divorced from Nancy is a lot like being married to her was," he'd said, and Rachel had understood and been suddenly, fiercely grateful to Danny for all of his raving, incoherent rants that made her want to rip his vocal chords out with her fingernails.

Still: the downside is that while Rachel is uniquely familiar with the inner workings of Danny Williams, it is only because she had clawed and fought and _bled_ for that ground. Every piece of Danny that she has held in her hands and learned, examined, was stolen in some way. It didn't matter that he had been stealing and invading her, too; the thievery went both ways, but it was still thievery. It had been war from the start, disguised by love. They hadn't even noticed the battleground until the love was burned away and all that was left were wearied hearts and gored foot soldiers.

Steve hadn't had to fight—_really_ fight—for anything of Danny's. Oh, perhaps superficially there is the bickering and the tousles and a flying fist now and then, but these are par for the course with Danny, these are the ways that Danny says _I love you._ Rachel had known, instantly, the first time that Grace had come home and told her distractedly that Danno had a new partner named Steve, and he talked about him a lot, and they were funny together, that all the ground she'd claimed during her marriage with Danny was lost to an enemy she hadn't even seen coming.

At the time, she hadn't realized exactly what Steve was, what he meant. He'd been Danny's new partner, something rapidly approaching a best friend, but until she had sat across the desk from Mary and heard her say _I've never seen an actual human being's eyes turn into hearts before_ like it was the easiest, most obvious thing in the world, she hadn't fully _understood_.

She hadn't understood Danny and, more importantly, hadn't even understood why their marriage had fallen apart the way it did. She'd thought that it was his job and her exhaustion and their backgrounds, but it wasn't.

Rachel's relationship with Danny had broken down because they both had thought that love was something you had to bleed from. If it didn't break the skin, it wasn't real. But they had both bled, profusely, and still fallen as far apart as two people can get while holding onto a child's hands without ripping her in half.

Danny still bled with Steve, but he bled for him, not because of him, and that made all the difference.

"You all right, darling?" Stan's hand covers her own, tired eyes smiling for her. He's older, almost sixty, and sometimes Rachel forgets that. But here, his gray is showing and his joints crack and she just wants to get him _out of here_, someplace safe, someplace where she can make him tea and rub his shoulders and then lie out against the length of him, letting him wrap her up and whisper _its okay_ until she believes it.

She smiles. "Yes, my love," she says, and kisses him.

.x.

The governor looks at Steve out of the corner of her eyes and starts to say something about sacrifices and the greater good, but the expression on his face must stop her from going much further, because she breaks off mid-sentence, lays her hand on his arm, and simply nods, once, firmly, almost a salute.

Steve nods back, choking on the lump in his throat. But he will not do this now, will not _lose it_ now, because he has a Navy fucking SEAL and compartmentalization is his middle name. You lose men during war and you grieve for them after; that's the way it works, the way it has always worked, the way it _must_ work if you want to get through a crisis with minimal casualties. Falling apart is not an option.

. . . But this was not a _man_, this was his _sister_, this was little fucking _Mary_, and she wasn't like the soldiers he had lost because they had at least signed _up_ for it, known the dangers, been proud and honored to die for their country, for a _cause_, and that's what had always gotten him through, in the past, when the adrenaline faded and he was left with the sharp strain of loss. This was not like that. This was _different._

Danny hasn't quite met his eyes since the whole kiss thing, but he hasn't hit him or backed out of his space, either, and right now his hand is resting on the low of Steve's back, touch gentle but comforting, a reminder. _I'm here._ Steve takes a few deep breaths, letting the governor's voice wash over him. He closes his eyes and counts to five, letting the pain hurt, letting it burn through him, and when he gets to _six_ he just shuts down, all systems crashing beneath his iron fucking _will_.

He straightens and Danny shifts away a little, folding his arms over his chest, knowing instinctively that what he needs now is to be treated like a SEAL and not like . . . like . . . like _Steve._

"I managed to get a hold of your contact, Lieutenant Rollins," the governor says. "She put me in touch with General O'Neill, who is apparently handling the operation. They're willing to bring one boat in for the survivors, if we can get them to the dock."

"What's the head count?" Steve asks. "If there's too many, we may have to go in groups."

"What about police, hunters, anyone that can handle a weapon?" Danny adds. "We need as much help as we can get if we're going to move all these people. Not to mention . . . " he trails off, rubbing the back of his head. "Not to mention the sick people. And I don't mean zombie-sick, I mean regular-sick, people with cancer and the flu and IVs sticking out of their arms. That's going to be slow going."

The governor sighs. Steve feels a flash of pity, but it seems insulting to feel sorry for her when she is standing in front of him with her back straight and her mouth in a resolute line.

Pat Jameson doesn't need his pity, she needs his firearm.

"We'll have to leave them," she says, and to her great credit, her voice doesn't shake. "And don't look at me like that, Daniel. Just saying that out loud makes me want to have myself arrested and thrown to the wolves, but my responsibility is to the greatest population of this island, and I am not willing to sacrifice the safety and well-being of the majority for the minority, no matter how pitiable they are or how Machiavellian that makes me."

"You can't just _leave them_, Governor," Danny argues, face going red, and Steve can see him gearing up. He puts a hand on his shoulder, aiming for somewhere between calming and warning. His partner shakes him off. "No, don't do that. Look, Governor, I respect that you have a responsibility. I do. But what are you going to say to those people? 'Sorry, you didn't make the cut'?"

"Yes," the governor says. "That's almost exactly what I'm going to say, and _I'm_ the one who is going to say it and then have to _live_ _with it_ afterwards, Daniel. Don't forget that."

"What about the people _not _in the hospital? We don't know how many are unaffected, hiding out somewhere."

The plan starts forming before he even realizes that he's planning; Steve lets the low, heated tones of Danny and Governor Jameson tune out into a low babble and focuses on the thought slowly forming in his mind.

The governor is right. They _can't_ take the sick people with them. It's not practical, in some cases it's not _possible_, and it puts the welfare of the others at risk. Sick people means slow travel, and slow travel means greater chance of being attacked or bitten.

But Danny's right, too. They can't just leave them here to wait for death, either by zombie or simply withering away from sickness or hunger or dehydration. And those families—if there are any—who _aren't_ in the hospital, who are holed up in their basements and bathrooms and garages, they can't abandon them, either. There is no way to send a message out to all the homes in the area, no way to let those people know that there's a way out.

So what they're looking at is a situation where some people can make it off the island and some people can't, and those that can't are going to need someone who can keep them as safe as possible until a way can be found to rescue them.

"We can't just _abandon_ people because they weren't lucky enough to have been in the hospital!" Danny is arguing fiercely, hands clamping into fists.

"So we don't," Steve says abruptly, feeling the sudden sense of calm that always overtakes him when he finally knows exactly what he's going to do. Maybe it's hopeless; maybe it's suicide; maybe it doesn't matter because Steve doesn't have anyone to fucking stay alive for, anyway.

Both Danny and the governor turn to look at him.

"Look, you're both right. The governor has a responsibility to get as many people off this island right now as she can. But we can't just give up on everyone else, either. So we do both. We'll make sure as many healthy people get to the dock as possible now, and leave behind those that can't walk or are too sick for the trip. While the governor and the powers that be come up with a way to rescue those left behind, I'll go through the island and round up whoever might have survived. Every couple of weeks, the governor can send in a boat and I'll bring whatever new survivors I've found, and that way we'll empty the island until we either find a cure, or . . ."

_Or the island has to be destroyed_ is left heavy but unsaid.

.x.

Even as the governor is nodding, Danny starts shaking his head frantically, because no, this is a terrible plan, an _awful_ plan, this is the worst plan that Danny has ever _heard_ because it means that Steve will be here alone on this fucking _zombie-infested_ island without backup or an escape plan.

"Danny, it's the only way we can take care of all civilians," Steve says, almost gently, like it's a fucking _apology_, that asshole, and Danny wants nothing more than to punch him in his stupid, stoic face.

"Fine," he hears himself say, "than I'm staying with you."

He hadn't even realized he was thinking it until the words were already out of his mouth; but once he's said them, they seem obvious. Steve is actually sort of right, about this plan. The plan is not the problem; it's Steve's martyrdom bullshit that's the problem. Sure, Danny can work with this plan, Danny can even make this plan an actual, viable _option_, so long as Steve isn't intent on falling on his fucking samurai sword or whatever.

The governor shrugs. "That sounds fair to me, boys. I'll let O'Neill know," she says, and turns on her heel, leaving Danny to face Steve.

They're both wearing their stonewall faces, which Danny knows from experience with Rachel is going to end either in violence or sex, and at this point, he can't actually rule out either of those things with Steve.

More to the point—the weird, totally unexpected point—is that he doesn't really want to. Well, okay, the violence he could do without.

But whatever. A close re-examination of his long taken for granted heterosexuality could wait until later. Danny feels . . . surprisingly calm about this.

"Don't start," Danny says as Steve opens his mouth. "No, seriously. Just shut up. Don't talk."

"Look, Da—"

"I said don't _talk._ Did you not hear me say that? Just listen, for once. I am not—I am _not_—leaving you here on your own. It's reckless, it's suicidal, and frankly, it's just not practical. You _can't_ protect an entire island by yourself. Okay? You can't. I know you think you're superman or whatever, but the fact is that you aren't, and there are _hundreds _more of them than there are of you, and if you want to actually help these people and not just go out in a blaze of glory because you're angry and sad and hopeless after losing Mary, then you _will_ accept that you need backup, and this whole partnership is based on the idea that _I am the fucking backup. _So, no. I am not going to let you kill yourself, and I am staying."

Steve is breathing harshly, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides, and Danny is waiting for him to take a swing, because you know what, fuck that, Danny is scared and angry too, and maybe knocking out a few of his asshole partner's teeth would make him feel better.

"Think about Grace," Steve says softly, and Danny could punch him just for that. "She needs you. If you don't leave the island with her, you might never see her again."

And fuck him, fuck him right to hell for picking the one argument that Danny doesn't have a response to, because it's true. If he lets Grace go and doesn't follow, it might be the last time he ever sees his little girl, and she might grow up with fucking _Step Stan_ as the only father she knows. When she gets older his memory will start to be less and less clear, and then one day she'll get married and when Step Stan walks her down the aisle it won't even seen wrong or weird or unnatural.

But he can't leave Steve, either, because if he does he will spend the rest of his long life a wasted fucking coward who left his partner behind.

And Steve. In all likelihood, Steve will be . . .

"I know," Danny says helplessly, letting his hands fall to his sides. He takes a shaky breath. "Fuck you, okay, I _know_ and I still can't, it's just, you're my _partner_, Steve, I'm not going to leave you here, I _can't_, you're too—that is, I just."

He breaks off, rubbing tiredly at the back of his head and then gestures to the space between them. "I mean, I kissed back, is what I'm saying, here."

Steve looks at him in silence for a long time. Then he asks, "Yeah?" and smiles a little, his eyes wrinkling at the corners in an expression that's long familiar but only now clear to Danny.

Danny grins back. "Yeah, you piece of shit," he says, and then, "C'mere."

.x.

Kono holds Mary's hand through the entire procedure, even when she starts to foam and spit and struggle against her restraints, her eyes going dead and her nails getting sharp in Kono's skin.

Chin keeps his hands on her shoulders, steadying her, calm, his grip too-tight but welcome. Max works diligently, almost not noticing Mary's change, but keeping a steady drip of morphine into her arm in case she can feel the pain. Kono is suddenly, disgustingly grateful for his lack of social skills; she isn't sure she could handle kind eyes or soft words, not right now.

She makes herself watch because she had kept her eyes closed with Ben. She owes Mary this, owes Steve this, owes _Ben_ this, so she holds her hand long after the contact gives anyone comfort.

"Okay," Max says, after several hours, and without warning, reaches under the table for a knife and cleaves off Mary's head in one clean stroke. Kono and Chin jump back as Mary's grip goes slack and she stops struggling. "Sorry," he apologizes neatly. "I thought it would be better to be quick. Like a bandaid."

"Like a . . ." Kono begins incredulously. "That was someone's—"

"Yes, quite a bit bloodier," Max interrupts in agreement. "Well, I have my findings. The solution is interesting. Milk is what did it."

"Milk?" Chin asks.

"Indeed. The lactose slowed the process. I don't know yet how this information may be used to find a vaccine, but I at least have a basis for my experimentation."

Chin's phone rings, and he murmurs, "It's the boss," quietly before leaving the room. Kono stays with Max, both of them looking uncomfortably at one another until Max says, "The head. I'm sorry."

He sounds sincere, which takes her by surprise. "Oh. Um, yeah. I guess—it's not like she could have said goodbye."

"No. It seems that the brain breaks down first. If it is any consolation, I also don't believe she was capable of feeling any pain once the neuro-pathways had deteriorated. I don't believe any of them are."

He's giving her a look as if he somehow knows and understands the relief that is flooding through her, so strong it makes her knees weak. She sags against the wall and takes in deep, gulping breaths of thanks.

She had killed Ben, but at least she hadn't _hurt_ him.

Chin reemerges with a grim look on his face. "That was the Boss. They've got a plan."


	4. Chapter 4

Okay. Um. I'm sorry?

Pineapples Killed My Neighbors;

or, This Would Never Happen in New Jersey

**Epilogue**

They don't talk about it. They've been doing this thing for about three months but outside of the bedroom Steve ignores everything so hard he's going to sprain himself. Danny's pretty sure that he'd made his feelings clear three months ago, what with the whole "I kissed back" thing and all, but apparently Steve has the self-confidence of a thirteen-year-old girl trying to ask her crush to the prom, so he sits back and sort of plays it by ear.

Which is hard to do when all he gets is radio silence.

Speaking of, Steve's voice crackles over the walkie-talkie at his side. Danny's camped out on the roof of the hospital, taking his turn on watch while Steve and Kono reap havoc on the zombie population of Hawaii. Danny's at the point where he gets a little scared of Kono, sometimes, because the level of badass she's reaching at her age and—let's all be honest—stature is more intimidating by far than Steve's tall-dark-and-scowling Navy SEAL routine. You _expect _it from Steve, is what Danny's saying. Danny's seen Kono cut a zombie's head off while telling a fart joke.

"Thought I'd find you up here," Chin's voice says from behind him. "You love the sniper position."

"It's like playing angry birds," Danny answers with a grin. "But with _zombies._ I really can't emphasize enough how awesome that is, Chin Ho. I just really can't."

Chin laughs, clamping a hand on his shoulder. "Well, I hate to spoil your fun, but I'm here to relieve you. Kono's just radio'ed in; she wants to take her lunch break with Max."

"Now see, _that_'s something I just never saw coming," Danny says, shaking his head.

"Well, you know how it is. Last man on earth and all that."

"Okay, now you're just being hurtful."

Chin shakes his head, settling into position and assuming a position of Zen-like stillness that hurts Danny down in his soul. It's unnatural to be still like that, is what it is. Chin Ho Kelly is to physical movement what Steve McGarrett is discussing feelings. Sometimes Danny wonders what exactly it was he did in another life to get saddled with such utter freaks.

Then again, he's the psychopath who decided to fall for his emotionally constipated partner, declare his love through the sweeping gesture of _leaving his daughter_ so that they could hunt zombies together (because nothing says 'be mine' like a decapitated zombie head), and then sit back and not say anything when said partner didn't even _notice_. So if Kono wants to be best friends with a socially inept ME, that's her prerogative.

"Have you heard from the mainland about recall?" Danny asks when he gets to the door. Chin shakes his head, and Danny releases a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.

What's weird is that—despite the obstacles living here presents, despite not being with Grace and not getting cable television—Danny actually likes Hawaii better like this than he ever did before Zombiepocalypse. Maybe it's the lack of tourists and Hawaiian shirts. Maybe it's the utter disappearance of pineapple.

Maybe it's the warm hand that claps down on his shoulder when he gets downstairs and the shit-eating grin of Steve McGarrett, armed like Rambo and bleeding from a cut on his face. Kono is sitting on a counter eating a sandwich and listening to Max talk about the rate of degradation in animal epidermis versus human. Kono seems interested. At the very least, it isn't putting her off her sandwich.

"You shoulda seen the bloodbath at the Hilton," Steve tells him gleefully. "We rescued a family that had been living on the top floor _and_ Kono totally Moby Dicked a guy."

Danny raises his eyebrows as Kono throws a cheerfully victorious fist in the air. "First of all, Moby Dicked is not a verb, and secondly, sometimes you frighten me, Steven. Honestly. I worry."

Steve just laughs, and they walk together to the cafeteria. It's always empty this time of day, when the sun starts setting. Everyone huddles in groups around the hospital, crouched around the two working TVs or squeezed into too-small beds where the waiting room used to be. No one likes to be along when it gets dark.

Steve refuses to sleep where the citizens are, because—though he won't admit it—he doesn't like them to ever think of him as an actual human. He revels in the way they look up to him as invincible and heroic; to let them know that he does things like piss off the side of the building and get crumbs on his chin is unthinkable.

"Boy, you sure know how to take a guy on a date," Danny says dryly when Steve tosses him a Jell-O and a cold can of beans. "Seriously, I'm moved."

"Shut your fuckin' mouth," Steve says, grinning like the thirteen-year-old he secretly is, and wraps his hand around Danny's wrist. "Just shut it."

"Make me," Danny tosses back, putting the beans down pointedly on the counter. "I've been playing angry birds all day on the roof; a little action would do me good."

Steve leans down until his mouth is just an inch away. "That so?" he asks, and his voice is almost gentle, and this is the part that _kills_ Danny, every time, because he can see it _right there_ but Steve is too afraid to give it to him.

In an ideal world, Danny would say, 'Yes, and let's talk about why we are standing here in an empty cafeteria, on the verge of doing unsanitary things in a space where people eat.'

But it is not an ideal world, it is the zombie apocalypse, and Danny guards jealously what little he has left to lose. So he doesn't say any of that; he grabs Steve's neck and doesn't say anything at all.

.x.

"Shit," Danny says, pressing a dirty hand onto his stomach and trying not to throw up at the touch of the slick liquid that coats his fingers. "_Shit._"

Keeping one arm on his stomach and using the other for leverage, Danny shimmies up a little straighter against the wall. Steve is still in the other room, the only one where they get even the tiniest cell reception. He's been trying to call Kono or Chin for the past fifteen minutes, but they both know that the cell reception towers are unreliable at best.

Frankly, Danny is tempted to give him a big, fat I-told-you-so. Danny likes busting fucking up zombies as much as the next guy, but he sees no reason to do it unprepared at midnight without informing anyone of their intentions.

It's only zombies, Steve had said. They won't even be hungry, Steve had said.

Danny glances down at his hand, which is getting cold with blood. "Fucker," he hisses, shifting uncomfortably against the wall.

The key is not to let Steve know about this, Danny decides. They are locked in a windowless basement and even Super!Steve can't kick down doors that are in the ceiling. Telling Steve about the little hole in his side will cause him to do something crazy, and everything will go downhill from there.

If there even _is_ a place downhill from "bleeding and locked in what used to be a meth lab...full of _zombies._"

A few jackets are piled in the corner by one of the stoves; Danny supposes cooking up drugs made the temperature a bit toasty. He bites down hard and makes himself stand up, gritting his teeth against the pain in his side. He moves slowly, leaning heavily against the wall, before sinking with relief back to the floor near the jackets and arbitrarily pulling one from the pile to put over his shoulders. In the terrible lighting the jacket will probably obscure the wound.

The door slams open. Seriously, Danny is going to have to teach Steve how to enter a room without making it look like a scene from _The Godfather._

"Any luck?" Danny asks, as casually as possible.

Steve frowns at him. "No. I couldn't get through."

Danny blows a slow breath out of his mouth. "Well, that's great, Rambo. Fabulous. I'm never listening to any of your ideas ever again."

"When have you _ever _listened to my ideas?"

"I'm here, aren't I?"

"Yeah, because I promised the last of our malasadas stash."

"Which, by the way, you have yet to deliver on," Danny points out. Steve grunts back at him, making a face, and Danny settles against the wall. By his best guess, it's probably around one or two. They'd gotten three of the zombies during their half-assed raid, but two had gotten away, and knowing zombies as intimately as he does, Danny suspects they'll be back. Which means that Steve and Danny have to either get through to Chin and Kono for backup or get the hell out of the building before the whole place is littered with crazy, hungry, undead people.

Steve kicks the wall in frustration. "Damnit," he swears. "I hate waiting." He glances over at Danny. "How much ammo you got?"

Danny makes a point to move fluidly, without favoring his side. He checks his gun. "Not much."

"Me either."

They look at one another. "I tried to send Kono a text," Steve says. "I left the phone on in the other room. We can keep checking to see if it went through."

"Yeah," Danny agrees, blowing a slow breath out of his nose. He watches with lidded eyes as Steve rattles uselessly against the basement's chained doors. It is becoming clear that this was going to be one of those nights that would end either in a metric ton of strewn limbs or . . . well, something else entirely, something Danny prefers not to consider.

"Well, all right," Steve says doggedly, "so we'll make a plan. Hopefully the text will get through to Kono; if not, we need to start rigging some things up in case of the worst. If we each take one side, it may not matter how many of them there are—zombies don't tend to be the best at hand-to-hand combat, so if we can get them as they come through the door we may be able to take them out that way. Or we could just wait; they'll find us in a few days if we can keep ourselves fortified."

Danny stops listening. He leans his head against the wall. With this kind of talk there's really no getting around the whole zombie-wound thing. "Steve," he says in resignation, "there's an element to this you aren't considering." He waits until Steve glances irritably over at him, surely about to assure him that he's considering _all_ the elements, that's what Navy SEALs _do_.

Danny slips off the jacket he'd taken off his shoulders so the red on his shirt can be seen. He shrugs. "I don't have a few days to _wait_."

Steve swears violently and sweeps over to Danny, dropping to his knees beside his partner and batting Danny's hands away when he tries to block his view. Danny sighs. Yeah. Panicked little girl mode kicked in, judging by the way that Steve was frantically patting himself down like he'd find a doctor in his pockets.

"Shitfuck, Danny," Steve mumbles. "Okay. Shit. Fuck. Okay. We can deal with this. We'll wrap it with cloth strips. There's got to be something in here we can use to clean it, keep you from getting infected—"

"In a meth lab?" Danny asks, amused despite himself. "Yeah, that seems likely. Nothing says 'neat freak' quite like a meth head. Those guys just _love_ sterile needles."

"We can sterilize it," Steve says brusquely, glaring at him. "There's flame in here."

"You're not sewing me shut with a needle we found in a _methamphetamine lab_," Danny replied firmly. "Not happening."

"Danny—"

"_No_, Steven!"

"Once we sterilize it, the needle will be—"

"_Still_ from a meth lab!"

"Danny," Steve tries again, a little gentler, but gives up at Danny's glare. He sighs. "Is it at least . . . clean? I mean, are you—did you take a dose of Max's serum this morning?"

Danny closes his eyes as he shakes his head. It was supposed to be his day off. He'd planned to stay in the hospital all day, but then Steve had geared up to go on one of his raids, and Danny hadn't been able to let him go alone.

And now there is something foreign and unwelcome _inside_ of him, growing, breaking down his cells and turning him into the very thing he'd set out to destroy. Danny swears softly. He hates everything. If they get out of this, he is never speaking to Steve ever again. Ever. He doesn't care _how_ many malasadas his partner bribes him with.

Steve settles beside him. Danny can see his brain working through their options. Danny lets him, because it probably makes him feel better.

"If . . . if we don't get out," Danny begins, but Steve cuts him off sharply with a glare.

"We'll get out," he says flatly. "There's still time to take the serum."

Danny sighs. "Okay," he acquiesces, because he knows Steve, and he doesn't have another choice, "fine. But if we don't—"

"We _will_—"

"But if we _don't_, Steven. You have to promise me."

Steve looks away. He studies the dirt on the floor. "We'll see," he says at last, and Danny nods, because knows that this is—for the moment—the most that Steve can give him.

.x.

Steve is not panicking.

Steve is not panicking.

Steve is not—

Steve slaps the heel of his hand against the wall. Danny is dozing. They've been here for almost an hour, and he looks pale and sick. Everyone is on a steady diet of cheese and milk, all that is left over, so they have a grace period; but Danny—though he'd kill Steve for saying it—is fucking _short_, and who knows how long it will take for the sickness to take hold. It had taken just half a morning, with Mary.

The thought of his sister still hurts, so Steve does what any good Navy SEAL would do and shoots a hole through the wall instead of feeling it.

"Steven," Danny says tiredly from his position against the wall, "behave yourself."

"I _hate_ waiting," Steve snaps, because angry is easier.

Mary's voice is still in his head: _time is short and wrought with motherfucking pineapples_.

"On the other hand, I _love_ slowly decomposing while I keep my fingers-crossed that somebody shows up in time to keep me from rotting to death," mutters Danny dryly, and Steve winces.

Fuck. Fuckity fuck _fuck_, this was not how he pictured today ending. He'd had something a lot more pleasant in mind, something with less clothing, something more—

Except not really more than that, actually. Because emotions and talking and relationships are sort of a sticking point, for Steve, sort of a phobia of his, sort of _the scariest fucking thing on this goddamn planet_, and Danny slowly decomposing in the corner is _the reason why._

Steve may or not be panicking.

.x.

Danny closes his eyes. He's surprised that it doesn't hurt more. He had expected to feel the death of every cell in his body, but it's not like that. It's like someone keeping you awake when all you want to do is sleep. He is dizzy and tired and hungry for no reason.

He figures he'll start worrying when Steve's flesh starts to look delicious. Until then, he sits, and closes his eyes, and waits. He misses Grace. He misses Rachel. He even, oddly, misses Kamekona.

He is tired. He is tired. He is _tired_.

"Wake up, Danny." Steve's voice is right by his ear, and Danny startles a little. "Keep your eyes open."

He sighs, squinting towards the sound. "Okay," he agrees dutifully, if only because at the moment, the thought of arguing with Steve is even more exhausting than keeping himself conscious. "Any luck with Kono?"

Steve has been obsessive-compulsively checking the cell phone every four minutes. Danny already knows what the answer will be, but the conversation helps keep him focused.

Into Steve's answering silence, Danny says, "We're coming up on it, you know."

Steve looks at him sharply, and then back. "We're not there yet," he says, and Danny sighs.

.x.

Steve checks the phone again. Still nothing. He has been over every square inch of this room, looking for something—anything—to slow the process that is eating away at Danny, anything to get them out faster, anything that will do _anything._ He cannot stand to be in this room while the night gets darker and Danny skin gets sallower and he is so fucking _useless_ right now and God_damnit_ this had been _his_ stupid idea—

"We're not there yet," he says to Danny when his partner murmurs, the words slurring together, "we're coming up on it, you know."

And oh, goddamnit, Danny is _right._ Steve knows he is right. Steve knows that if they don't figure something out, if he doesn't fix this, then the moment will come and it won't be Mary on the telephone saying _I love you_ like she'd been thinking it her whole life. It will be Danny's dead eyes and his brains spilling out of his mouth and Steve's knife in his hand. It will be Danny's hot blood on Steve's face. It will be that. It will be nothing _but_ that.

"I'd rather you did it than one of them," Danny says, and his voice is so quiet and so tired, every letter of every word biting into Steve. There are so many things that Steve wants to say, that he hasn't said, because—because he's been such a fucking _coward_, but it was always easier to take Danny's kisses as promises than make any of his own.

"Danny," he snaps warningly. "We're not getting to that point."

"Steven, for pity's sake," Danny bites back, bitter laughter in his voice. "How much closer do we have to get until we're 'getting' there? My hair is falling out like I'm my Uncle Rudy on his fiftieth birthday, Jesus."

"There's still _time_," Steve insists stubbornly.

Danny's head lolls to the side and he raises his eyebrows. "There might not be. We don't know how long we have until it's irreversible."

"_Dan_ny," Steve says, and he hears the desperation in his own voice, the entreatment. He can barely believe the sound that comes out after, the air that sounds like tears around the single word he manages: "_please_."

But Danny shakes his head, pitiless. "Promise me," he demands. "I am keeping me eyes open, but promise me."

Steve says it, though he hates every word: "I can't. You're too . . . I can't."

"Do it anyway."

There are noises upstairs, the familiar moans and shuffles of bodies too decayed to be walking. Steve glances at the phone. The message still hasn't gone through. Danny pulls a small tuft of hair out of his scalp and tosses it away.

"Danny," he manages, and doesn't care about the way Danny's skin is beginning to become see-through, "you don't understand."

.x.

Danny wants to laugh, but he is too tired.

Doesn't _understand_? He can feel himself slipping away, slowly and laconically but slipping all the same. He gave up his daughter to Step Stan and a world without pineapples. This morning Steve had looked at him and killed Danny with all the words he didn't say. Now Danny can see his own blood in his veins and Steve still isn't saying anything, but there is one promise left to him and he will _get it_, because it is the last thing he will do.

"You lost Mary," Danny says, ruthless. "I'm sorry. But I'm not your consolation prize."

Steve looks startled. "You never were," says the other man, and he shifts so that he is kneeling before Danny's hunched form. "Danny. _Danny_. You were never that."

"Okay then, partners," Danny agrees dryly, almost bitterly. "Whatever. Your life isn't my problem right now. Mine is. Now _promise_ me, or I'll do it right now."

Steve looks panicked. He takes Danny's hands into his own as if to prevent them from reaching for a weapon. He is quiet.

.x.

Danny, _Danny_, Steve thinks silently, desperately, you don't realize what you're _asking._

'Consolation prize,' he had said, and it had carved away at Steve's heart like Kono's machete. He's known that Danny loves him. Danny is many things, but subtle is not—has never been—one of them. Once he decided to be Steve's, he simply _was_, one-hundred-percent. But Steve isn't like that. Steve can only be Danny as long as no one says it out _loud._

He has learned nothing in life if not that good things never stay, so he avoids calling Danny "good" and hopes he can outmaneuver fate.

But here is his partner, falling to literal pieces, calling himself a 'consolation prize,' as if Mary had died and Steve had looked for some sick replacement.

"I'm not saying I won't," he promises, looking hard at their linked hands. "But shit, Danny. You're—that's too big. That's . . . I haven't . . ."

"I've never asked you to say it," Danny interrupts. His eyes are hard. "But if you love me, you'll do it. You'll promise me now and you'll do it if you have to. I'm not asking you to be something you aren't, Steven. I'm just asking you to be exactly what you _are. _No exceptions."

If you love me, Danny says, and the words echo in Steve's skull. If you love me, if you love me. Be exactly what you are.

The words rip and tear in his throat, but he says, "I promise."

.x.

It hurts so good to hear the words, because it means that Steve loves him—it is the closest they will ever come, Danny is sure—but it also means that he is dead, now. There is only waiting.

The call won't go through. Danny knows this. _Steve_ probably knows this.

But Steve had said 'I promise' when he meant 'I love you,' so Danny—always the romantic—figures perhaps it isn't so bad, this ending.

.x.

Four hours later, his phone vibrates. Steve doesn't read the text. He knows what it says. They are coming.

Danny's breath is shallow and his eyes keep closing. He looks up at Steve and smiles a little, hard.

"Okay," he says.

Steve fingers the knife in his hand. "I'm sorry," he offers. About tonight, about never saying what he should have, about Grace. "You'd have been better off if you'd never met me."

Danny laughs. "No," he disagrees wryly. "I'd have spent the rest of my life pining after Rachel."

He coughs. Blood spills out of the side of his mouth. Steve raises the knife so that the blade bites a little into Danny's nerveless skin.

"I love you," he says at last, helplessly. The words spill out of him.

Danny nods. "You promised," he reminds him gently. "And I know. Though, for future reference, you should have said."

"I didn't . . . I was . . . the situation seemed uncertain."

"Steven, the depth of your emotional constipation is not surprising to me anymore."

Steve rests his forehead against Danny's. "It should have been me," he murmurs, and he is sincere. He has no one else. Danny has Grace, has Rachel, has—

"Don't make _my_ glorious exit about _you_," Danny laughs, and brings a shaking hand up to punch his shoulder. "Shit, you fuckface, we live at the goddamn end of the world. It was going to happen _some_time."

Mary again: _nut up_.

"I love you," he says again, twice as many times has he has every said it to anyone that wasn't Mary.

Danny smiles. "Prove it," he whispers, and Steve, weeping, does.

.x.

When it is done, Steve puts the phone on a shelf, out of reach, for Kono to find. He listens to a moment to the shuffling sound of hunger and tosses his knife into his good hand.

"Okay, fuckers," he says as the door begins to give under the weight of the insistent undead. He stands at the ready and waits. "Come and _get me_."

.x.

By the time they get to the building they had tracked Steve's cell phone to, Kono knows what they are going to find.

She thinks of Ben. That's surprising—she hasn't, in such a long time. But now, halted before the closed door that is standing between her and carnage, she thinks of him.

Chin breathes quietly behind her, his hand on her shoulder.

"Was there really any other way it could have ended?" he asks, implicitly acknowledging what they expect to find.

"Yes," Kono says, eyes dry, throat closed. "They could have found some miracle exit. Steve the Science Guy to the rescue. Danny would have been talking the whole time, covering up his fear. He'd—they'd banter, fight, because that's how boys show they care. They'd get back to the hospital. Steve would say _I love you_ because he was scared. They'd wake up in the morning and place bets on who got the most kills that day."

Chin squeezes her shoulder, waits. Kono puts her hand on the door handle and sighs. "No," she admits quietly, "there was never any other way."


End file.
